Gordon Campbell: the Reserve Bank, the UN shortlist, & Trump

Gordon Campbell on the Reserve Bank, the UN
shortlist, and Trump

Can there really
be there any link between the US presidential elections and
yesterday’s RBNZ signals on interest rates and the NZ
dollar? Well, maybe. And it would be this: the improving US
economy is reportedly putting a tailwind behind the US
dollar, and rendering the actions of our Reserve Bank
virtually irrelevant. Not to mention putting a dent in the protest campaign of Donald
Trump.

A steady stream of strengthening
fundamentals are driving the U.S. dollar higher. Healthier
data from jobs, consumer spending and housing have put a
tailwind on the greenback.Moreover, America's
economy is outperforming the weaker economies aboard. And
this is setting a backdrop for improved prospects for
another rate hike in the months ahead….And as the U.S. is
expected to deliver a steady procession of healthier data
over the next few months, this should spill-over to the
dollar and keep most commodity prices on their
backfoot.

Meaning: if the RBNZ cuts interest rates -
or doesn’t - in the coming months, the result is going to
be much the same: relative to the USD, our exchange rate is
headed downwards, thereby raising import prices and lifting
the rate of inflation most of which will be imported. None
of which came through yesterday in the myopic concentration
on the RBNZ actions and intentions. Similarly, it is taken
for granted that this cocktail of rising prices will be good
for ordinary New Zealanders, even though their wage rates
have been virtually stagnant for the past 18 months.

Besides: if 70 cents in the dollar is judged “high”
you have to ask: how much of a crutch do our exporters
really need in order to compete on global markets, if
enjoying a 30 per cent advantage against the US dollar is
still felt to be an intolerably harsh burden for them to
bear? And if we have to import inflation to get it near the
RBNZ’s preferred 2% target, what does that say about the
depressed, deflated state of the rest of the productive
economy – you know, the bits that aren’t building
houses, or waiting on tables (and making beds) for tourists
in Queenstown ?

Just about the only good thing in this
current economic scenario is that a recovering US economy
– measured by job growth, increased retail spending – is
going hand in hand with increasing approval poll ratings for
President Obama. This has to be bad news for Donald Trump,
and for the rest of the circus entourage now winding up the
Republican convention in Cleveland. His apocalyptic message
can only resonate widely if and when the US economy is
tanking.

Overall, it hasn’t been a great week for the
Orange Messiah, starting with his tentative “do I really
want this guy?” unveiling of Indiana government Mike Pence
as his running mate. Quite a team: a former reality TV star
for President, and a former conservative radio DJ for
Vice-President. Pence gives Trump two essential : access to
Koch brothers campaign money, and credibility with
evangelicals, who will relish having a fellow religious
zealot only one heartbeat away from the Presidency.
Especially when Trump appears willing to entirely outsource
the actual work involved in running foreign policy and
domestic programmes.

To be fair to Trump, that’s not a
major innovation. George W. Bush also outsourced most of the
decision-making in his presidency to Dick Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld. Pence however, is not in their league. In early
April, I wrote about Pence in this column.

Just in case you
thought Trump was the nutty extreme of American politics,there’s this situation in Indiana:
Governor Mike Pence recently signed a bonkers anti-choice
bill into law that will not only hold doctors liable if a
woman has an abortion because of a fetus’s race, sex, or
diagnosis of Down syndrome or any other disability, but also
requires fetal remains to be cremated or buried, whether from an
abortion or a miscarriage. Providers would likely pass the costs of these funerary
services to patients. Plus, women seeking an abortion would
need an ultrasound 18 hours before the
procedure.

(As mentioned in that column, Pence’s
actions inspired a genius form of telephone activism by
Indiana women.) Still, it says something about the current
state of the Republican Party that a Pence seemed to be the
sanest person this week at the Cleveland convention.

None of which makes much difference to Trump’s
supporters, and to opinion polling that still has him only
three or four points behind Clinton. The fascinating history
of white delusion on which Trump has based his self-pitying
campaign has been well documented here and also here:

Even so… if concentrated
doses of Donald Trump are bad for your mental health, its
hard to imagine what prolonged exposure to Hillary Clinton
will do to the American psyche over the coming months,
either.

UN Secretary-General
shortlist

Talking of showbiz politics, the
democratic and transparent part of finding the next UN
Secretary General is now over. Things have now returned as
usual to the secretive, undemocratic forums in which this
decision has always been made; namely, the Security Council.
Today, its 15 members (permanent and temporary) carried out a secret straw poll and chose a
shortlist.

The results, which will not be made
public, will then be shared with governments sponsoring the
candidates. The point is to urge candidates incapable of
securing sufficient support to drop out of the
race.

The initial debates have played to the
strengths of U.N. insiders like including [UNDP chief Helen]
Clark, António Guterres, who served as the U.N. high
commissioner for refugees for ten years, and Argentine
Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra, a former top U.N. official
who oversaw logistics for the organization’s peacekeeping
operations; these three have displayed a far deeper grasp of
the issues before the U.N. than some of their challengers.

To that list of front-runners (Malcorra, Clark,
Guterres) one has to add two further women : the Costa Rican
diplomat Christina Figueres (who has made a strong late
run) and the UNESCO boss, Irina Bokova.

Early informal
news reports have Antonio Guterres as the top of the
shortlist voting, and with Helen Clark falling short of the
unrealistic New Zealand expectations Since this straw poll
included all of the temporary Security Council members,
there’s no definitive indicator of how the Big Five (the
US, Russia, France, China and Britain) will finally vote.
Still, choosing Guterres would put someone with a long background in
refugee work at the helm of the UN. Not a bad outcome.

The Politics of Crazy

In 1992, Texas
maverick millionaire Ross Perot made Willie Nelson’s
“Crazy’ his presidential campaign theme song - partly as
a defiant joke, and partly because he just wanted to dance
with his wife to a song he liked. This year, it feels more
literally true of the presidential contest… but no-one
really needs an excuse to listen once again to the great
Patsy Cline:

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